


gimme sympathy

by orphan_account



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-12
Updated: 2010-08-12
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Eames just wants something to call his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gimme sympathy

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Metric song of the same name.

Arthur's on his knees in front of him, a hand on the edge of the tub. The water's slicking his hair to his face, and he's mussed and perfect but as soon as he dries he'll revert to himself.

Eames tries to make it last. It never quite works that way.

*

Whatever it is, it's complicated. That's about the only way Eames can explain it.

*

"Fancy a bite to eat, love?" Eames asks, surrounded by everyone, everyone tired and ready to make their separate ways for the night, to enjoy a night of sleep without dreams.

"I have alternate arrangements, Mr. Eames," Arthur says, crisp and professional, and you can barely hear the 'fuck you' embedded under it all.

*

It's often with Arthur tied up in knots, all perfect ties like his clothes, but messy, his hair mussed, his skin stacked with the sucking bruises Eames leaves as evidence, as ownership. Arthur doesn't let him do it outside of dreams, doesn't give him any measure of control over him, so those are the only marks Eames can leave, and those are always gone when they wake. It's almost like it's never happened at all.

It's not that they don't have sex on the outside. It's that Arthur's a control freak, a perfect, glowering control freak who controls it like the rest of his life and won't let Eames have any say. Eames wants him any way he can have him, so he takes what he can get.

*

"You should marry me," Eames says.

"Oh?" Arthur asks, doesn't look up from his work.

"Then, at least, I could know your last name," Eames says. He knows it, has known it for years, hunted through documents like a man obsessed, which he was. Which he is.

"That's a terrible reason to get married," Arthur says, still doesn't look up.

The thing is, Eames just wants something to call his own.

*

At one point they went three years without seeing one another, and Eames knew where Arthur was every step of the way. He was waiting for Arthur to come to him.

He didn't think it would take so long.

*

It's a beach, but the sand is soft and forgiving and the waves are warm. It's a beach, but better.

"I always wanted to make love to you on the sand," Eames says, when he sees it, when he sees it laid out in front of him, his dream world, his confession. Arthur rolls his eyes, Arthur smiles, but there isn't any part of Eames that doesn't mean it.

"Is this the honeymoon?" Arthur asks, after, with sand on his thighs and not one inch of him untouched, for once, all mussed and gorgeous and not like himself at all.

"It could be," Eames says. "If you said yes."

Arthur wraps his arms around his knees, watches the waves roll in and out, not quite the true colour of the sea. Not quite true.

"Are you in love with me?" he asks, and Eames doesn't answer. "Don't fall in love with me," he says.

"Your ego is astounding," Eames says, and presses a kiss to a sandy shoulder.

"That's not an answer," Arthur says.

That's the whole goddamn point.

*

There's no way to find something in this. There's no way to press further, no way to force an ending, because Arthur is unflappable, immovable, and there is no part of Eames that wants this to end. But it's hard, to watch the back of his neck as he works and to know it doesn't belong to him more than anything else, that the only place he owns Arthur is in bed, and probably not even then. He doesn't know if Arthur's fucking other people. He doesn't know anything about him at all.

*

"Dom can't know," Arthur says, sometime after everything has fallen apart, after Mal is dead and Cobb is nothing like what he was before.

"What is there to know?" Eames asks, though he thinks Arthur is underestimating Cobb, overwhelming grief or no.

"This isn't a game," Arthur says, and for once he isn't unruffled, for once Eames can hear emotion, even if it's only frustration. That shouldn't feel like a win.

Eames doesn't say anything. He doesn't think anything he could say would be remotely helpful.

*

The thing is, Eames thinks he's in love with Arthur, but he can't be sure. The thing is, he knows Arthur doesn't love him, and he wishes he wasn't sure of that.

*

After three years, Arthur returns. After three years, Arthur has a job for him.

"Oh darling, light of my life," Eames says, when he sees him. "How I have missed you."

"Sometimes it's really hard to tell you're lying," Arthur muses.

"That's what you hire me for," Eames says, and doesn't flatter himself into thinking it's anything more than that.

*

The thing is, Eames doesn't think he could call this a relationship, but he wants to. Eames doesn't have anything resembling home anymore, and it's pathetic that the closest thing he has is Arthur. Arthur, who has Cobb, who had Mal, who has every little thing in front of him, Arthur who has things that don't figure into Eames' world. Arthur's the only thing Eames has at all.

*

"I'm not going to tell you not to hurt him," Cobb says, tone entirely conversational. His jaw is tight, though. His arms are crossed.

"I don't believe that's a worry," Eames says.

"Should I be having this conversation with him instead?" Cobb asks, doesn't look at him, just keeps looking forward.

"Ah, Dom, I didn't know you cared," Eames says, and is treated to a sliver of a smile.

*

Sometimes Arthur spends the night. Sometimes, not often, not in a pattern. Nothing even Eames would gamble on. The night after they touch land in LA, Arthur comes with him, comes with him and is silent as he checks into a four-star hotel, big and bright and deserved.

Says nothing in the room, just seems to crumple back into someone human, someone that has spent weeks on something they weren't entirely sure was going to pan out.

"Let go," Eames says, before and after, cards a hand through Arthur's hair, runs a hand through the sweat on Arthur's back. "Let go," and then, after, "Stay."

Arthur stays the night, but when Eames wakes he's gone, no sign of him, not a note or a single thing out of place. And there is nothing in Eames that is surprised.


End file.
